Epicmafia

Site member deficiency

over 9 years

Lots of players that I use to play with no longer play here. When reviewing the rules, I realized they seem to have minor alterations here and there which I must have missed before. This is when I came across a subjective rule near the end of the rule list

which states-"Excessive insults against one or more persons/groups based on slurs/comments against race, sexual orientation, religion or other similar personal circumstances. More likely to issue the violation if a person being abused has asked the offender or others in the game or thread to cease."

Then I continued and read this-"Posting a hidden link or using scripts in the forums, in game, on a player's wall, through private messages, etc."

Apparently my notes and punishments where from in game. The ironic thing is if you get punished for them, you get forum banned until a set amount of time, giving you no way to report the information. I remember being on a server that did the exact same thing, it was ran by 10 year olds on garry's mod and it was DDOS'd and its admin to user ratio was complete garbage.

Sandbox has never enforced these rules when I played and was known for having no rules at all other then harassment, which was never taken seriously. This site obviously either doesn't belong to Lucid anymore and I just didn't get the message that this game has been tainted by a third party, or Lucid has made a terrible mistake giving people admin simply because experience and no warnings. Just because you don't break the rules as a user doesn't mean you don't break the rules as an admin, especially if you know that the host is stupid enough not to cross check everything they can in such a low populated game.

Let's talk about the hateful comment rule. This involves generalization's that are derogatory. What about generalization's that are not derogatory? What about the words communism and capitalism? This game was addicting because it allowed me to see how tricky people could try to be and how gullible people are even when shown evidence. This was one of the best formats for a social experiment I have seen on the internet. Now I guess because the user base has shrunk due to other games who don't ban for saying something that could easily be ignored by someone with self-discipline and tolerance, Lucid figured to let some random group of people take over the left overs of the user base. In real life, even reporting something like that wouldn't be taken serious in most places as a common folk, as only children act this way, and I mean 12 year old's and lower.

As for the script thing, didn't sandbox have no rules? I guess no safety zone for the people who actually were members of this community anymore to come back to. They will come back here and tell themselves," This site went to the gutters". Actions should be more important then words, as they actually effect people. I don't know what sick planet you guys come from that thought any different, but, ya'll should have stayed there. I'll come back to this site once Lucid snaps out of it or whoever took over the site decides to give the illusion that the site was what it use to be, again. Till then, time to play real games.

Nitroxium

over 9 years

For the record, policy does not scare people away. I always see noavis come back with an avi and they laugh it off like regular people.

SonicTheHuman

over 9 years

falconpunch says

The real issue with this site is that 15% of the players make 95% of the posts on the forum

The people who leave/don't want to play because of bad moderating won't even post here so threads like this get negged.

That's because most players aren't on here to be a part of the community, they're just here to play mafia and go away. Like how on a train station not everyone starts talking to eachother, just a small group of bold people. The rest stay quiet. Bad moderation, I wince every time someone says that. So what a bunch of people decide to act like banned users for "teh l0lz" and start crying when they get reported and a mod takes action. Now if you recall. When someone suspected to be a banned user DOESNT get banned, you all cry anyways until he's banned. Mods are just applying "Better safe than sorry" to these reports. It's not like bans can't be undone. And newer players rarely get banned for impersonation. It's usually someones alt, as in the case with all three reports groundhog linked, and also, all of them were solved quietly and peacefully. They pointed out a mistake, he fixed them. Now if he had refused to fix them, then this could've been called bad moderation

Should I shut up now? I probably should...

SonicTheHuman

over 9 years

thebrontosaurus says

I do think member growth is stagnant for a few reasons, and not just in sandbox:

1. Some people are incredibly mean to new players trying to learn the game.

I have to disagree with the principle. During my, err, "colorful" life in training lobby as a noavi. I literally had no idea what to do and i spent my time laughing GTing and rling away. Then I joined new games that had POLICY TIME so I asked someone what an avi is, then i got an avi and started playing more seriously, i have no idea how this knowledge works, I guess being accepted as a part of the community helps.

thebrontosaurus says

2. Anyone new who posts gets accused of being a banned user, or anyone new who does well in a trophy run / competitive round.

I am a thirteen year old in a class of fifteen year olds, and every time I ace a test I'm accused of cheating. It's in man's nature to be suspicious and not acknowledge the fact that someone's skill or luck is superior to theirs. You have to man up and take it, and take delight in the fact that you won it without resorting to any cheating. And if you did cheat well... shame on you its just 10 pixels on a screen :P

[quote=thebrontosaurus3. The site is very cliquey and has a pretty exclusive culture that can turn away a lot of people. Games aren't so strictly moderated so people going off topic mid-game to chat leaving other players outside of the conversation frustrated is also discouraging.[/quote] Wherever you go there's always a different culture. For online take EM and BGO. Hell, for anyone that's moved out of country, you know how weird it is to fit in. If someone expects to just pop up and have everyone act like they've known them from grade school, it's probably for the best that they've left.

Sorry for the long posts, I just like conveying my points :P

LulukoAbel

over 9 years

why the hell is this thread still a thing

Psy

over 9 years

Nitroxium says

May I add that the rules themselves have been used by mods to bully and scare away players from the community due to existing circle jerks.

Neg away :^)

your not allowed to blame others for scaring away players, your a policy lyncher, sorry!

deletedover 9 years

And by sandbox mods I mean the site mods that moderate sandbox.

deletedover 9 years

Nitroxium says

May I add that the rules themselves have been used by mods to bully and scare away players from the community due to existing circle jerks.

Neg away :^)

The circlejerk is too strong on EM, our sandbox mods are all part of the same circlejerk. Coincidence? I think not.

Nitroxium

over 9 years

Also circle jerks tend to neg anything that is against what the circle jerk believes and that drives people away as well.

At the current time, the circle jerk are the same people who try to enforce their ways of thinking upon people, which in some cases are good because it works against transphobia for example, which I find despicable, but in other cases it goes too far and does a witch hunt on people just for saying the word "r a p e" for example. (Notice I can't even say the word)

Nitroxium

over 9 years

May I add that the rules themselves have been used by mods to bully and scare away players from the community due to existing circle jerks.

Neg away :^)

deletedover 9 years

thebrontosaurus says

I do think member growth is stagnant for a few reasons, and not just in sandbox:

1. Some people are incredibly mean to new players trying to learn the game.

i agree with this point especially. policy wasnt always a thing, i remember when it first started making its rounds and it was when we only had one lobby so there was no other place for newbies to go and learn. the only people we see coming back to play games now - for the most part - are people who have been around awhile, or people who make locked games for their friends and never interact with the rest of the epicmafia community.

ive also seen several users bullied off this website, most of which were for no reason whatsoever. inappropriate (as if it's ever appropriate) doxxing and harassment have driven a lot of people - new and old - away and i've seen this happen enough for it to be an actual problem rather than an isolated incident.

falcon idk why you're acting like you know anything about pre-2010 EM if you weren't even a part of this community before then

deletedover 9 years

nobody quits sandbox.

cub

over 9 years

thanks for enlightening us o wise one

Falconpunch

over 9 years

ScubaSteve you idiot... see I joined in 2010... 2010-2011 was the last great year(s) of EM, because 2012 came and all this PR moderation came into effect. But almsot everyone on the forums is from 2012/13 or later so they don't know anything about why this site even got popular enough for them to find it LOL

Falconpunch

over 9 years

The real issue with this site is that 15% of the players make 95% of the posts on the forum

The people who leave/don't want to play because of bad moderating won't even post here so threads like this get negged.

PEople are forgetting how this site got popular in the first place. It was a very small community before 4chan realized how trolly these games could be if you didnt take it seriously, and ever since then this site has been a laid back fun place to troll each other. And trolls have always understood to just troll each other.

I feel like a lot of the people with influence on this site now werne't around in the old days so they don't realize this... lol

thebrontosaurus

over 9 years

I do think member growth is stagnant for a few reasons, and not just in sandbox:

1. Some people are incredibly mean to new players trying to learn the game.

2. Anyone new who posts gets accused of being a banned user, or anyone new who does well in a trophy run / competitive round.

3. The site is very cliquey and has a pretty exclusive culture that can turn away a lot of people. Games aren't so strictly moderated so people going off topic mid-game to chat leaving other players outside of the conversation frustrated is also discouraging.

This is really more for Main Lobby than anything here, I'm not too familiar with the nature of sandbox or have a feel for how busy it is.

thebrontosaurus

over 9 years

Thanks to the new restrictions on forum posting, I haven't made that mistake anymore since no one is able to make new accounts to spam inappropriate content with.

It's not my fault people like to impersonate banned users and get upset when I think it's them. It's an easily corrected mistake besides.

GroundHog

over 9 years

also ill add that he made the same "mistake" repeatedly. if someone spelt the same word wrong after being told it was wrong the first time they should be failed

GroundHog

over 9 years

and yeah i want an EM utopia where mods are perfect and don't make any mistakes at all

GroundHog

over 9 years

SonicTheHuman says

Sorry went out, GroundHog are you really weighing like 3 reports over the thousands bront has moderated? Thats like failing you in a 600 word essay because you spelled 3 words wrong

except it wasn't just 3 reports, those are just 3 i digged out. There are a lot more, and probably a lot more ones where the user wasn't a banned user but just a new user so they wouldn't be able to get themselves unbanned and it wouldn't look like a "mod mistake" to the EM community.

Psy

over 9 years

"I guess no safety zone for the people who actually were members of this community anymore to come back to. They will come back here and tell themselves," This site went to the gutters".
if they left back then it was probably because of the awful no-moderation rule that used to take place, they already thought it was gutters, hence why they left lol!

deletedover 9 years

Foxie has a point though, this site isn't too friendly on new players so it's no shock they don't stick around.

cub

over 9 years

i think we just need to policy harder until new players get avis and become constructive members of sandbox

SkycladObserver

over 9 years

I feel like the harassment rules aren't the cause; it's just the fact that honestly, epicmafia's community in general seems to be below average.

voryn

over 9 years

The popular circle-jerk is so self-absorbed they don't realize the member stagnation happening in sandbox, but good attempt in trying.

That and the member stagnation on sandbox is more from the closed off nature of all the little memes this community revolves around, rather than harassment rules which are necessary and sensible

gistofeverything

over 9 years

ScubaSteve says

Community violations have been enforced in Sandbox, both in game and out of game, for over two years now. lol

This guy.

Moderation started in sandbox about a year ago.